Tiger Global leads $108 mn round in used cars marketplace Spinny

Pre-owned cars platform Spinny on Monday said it has raised $108 million (Rs 804 crore) as part of a Series D funding round led by Tiger Global Management with the US based investment firm alone pooling in $75 million. 

New York based Avenir Growth also joined as a new investor in this round with an investment of $20 million, said Spinny in a statement. Existing investor General Catalyst and others also contributed to this funding, it added. 

The total funding amount comprises a primary capital infusion of $105 million and a secondary sale of $3 million by select angels and early-stage investors. 

Spinny, operated by Valuedrive Technologies Pvt Ltd, will use the fresh capital to enhance technology and product capabilities, expand in existing markets and enter new geographies in the country, and to hire. 

"Having a customer-first approach has been our differentiator, and we will continue to focus on improving our quality and experience control capabilities," said Niraj Singh, cofounder and CEO of Spinny. 

Spinny was founded in 2015 by Singh, Mohit Gupta and Ramanshu Mahuar. It has 15 car hubs that operate across eight cities -- Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad. 

The Series D funding round comes just after General Catalyst led the Series C funding round of $65 million in April. Feroz Dewan’s Arena Holdings and Think Investments had also joined as new investors then while existing investors Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners) and Fundamentum Partnership participated in that round. 

The back-to-back Series C and Series D funding rounds come after Spinny acquired rival Truebil in a cash-and-equity deal in August last year. That was just months after the pre-owned cars platform had raised $43.7 million in its Series B funding led by Fundamentum Partnership.  

Prior to that, Spinny raised around $13.2 million in a Series A round led by Elevation Capital and Accel in 2019. 

The platform raised $1 million (around Rs 6.4 crore) in a seed round led by Blume Ventures in June 2017.   

The used cars segment in India has attracted significant investor interest even during the pandemic. 

In November last year, Cars24 raised $200 million (Rs 1,480.9 crore) as part of its Series E funding round. This catapulted the firm to the unicorn club featuring startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion. 

In June last year, CarTrade.com raised Rs 321 crore ($42.5 million) from two existing investors. 

 This year, Tiger Global stormed into the second spot of the most active VC list, toppling Accel. 

The US based investment firm is writing cheques at a frenetic pace this year. In its ongoing second investing season in India’s startup market after a three-year hiatus till December 2018, Tiger Global has more or less stuck to its traditional playbook, according to a recent VCCircle analysis. 

Tiger Global's new investments this year include bets such as group health insurance startup Plum, investment platform Groww, conversational messaging platform Gupshup Technology India Pvt Ltd, and Indian social network ShareChat.